No, kids – don’t take your seats. Not if you want to learn….

“Kids aren’t meant to sit still all day and take in information,” Steve Boyle, a co-founder of the National Association of Physical Literacy, told the Times. His organization has developed a collection of short videos, or “BrainErgizers,” that lead kids through quick bursts of physical activity — providing opportunities to “breathe, relax, recharge, and refocus,” as the NAPL website puts it. According to the Times, the videos have been used in classrooms and Boys & Girls Clubs in 15 different states.

Research suggests they may be on to something. As Science of Us has previously noted, exercise can act as a memory boost. And a study published last year in Pediatrics found that allowing time for physical activity during lessons helped elementary-school students to do better in both math and language lessons; on average, those in the movement group were roughly four months ahead of the control group in their learning by the end of the two-year experiment.

Those activity bursts don’t have to take time away from class, either: In a 2015 Washington Post column, Aleta Margolis, director of the Center for Inspired Teaching, explained that, with a little creativity, movement can be incorporated directly into teaching: “When students time each other running for 30 seconds, they get to practice using basic time measurements,” she wrote.

Something to Believe In

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"Is it a fact—or have I dreamt it—that, by means of electricity, the world of matter has become a great nerve, vibrating thousands of miles in a breathless point of time?"— Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables, 1851